Undergrad What is the Abstract Definition of Energy?

[rumborak]

All the above points are certainly true, but I'll also say that it is an interesting thing to at least ponder how these transformations between various manifestations of energy (kinetic, fields etc) are facilitated. Especially when you consider quantum mechanics, where for very short periods of time the energy balance sheet can be unbalanced, i.e. you can borrow energy provided you pay it back in time.

 

[Dale]

Not quite. Heat is a form of energy, but not all heat can be used to do work.

it could all be used as long as your cold reservoir is at absolute 0.

 

[Voltageisntreal]

I got you :D. Energy isn't real as such, that's why you're getting intuitively confused. The real phenomena which we experience would be velocity. That's how we percieve the world, through velocity and mass. Everything can come down to velocity and mass.

The rest is just things we believe in, like energy. You can't measure it because it isn't "real". To measure energy, you have to use it up, at which point it's "forces" at work which we can only REALLY detect because of the velocity they create on massess.

So energy isn't real, hence "real"-ly it's nothing: just a belief we created to help us deal with certain things.

 

[Dale]

And on that note we will close the thread as another great example why these threads are so useless.

The rest is just things we believe in, like energy. You can't measure it because it isn't "real". To measure energy, you have to use it up,

In the future please make sure that your posts do not contain nonsense like this.

 

[fresh_42]

Energy isn't real as such

This is a rather edgy interpretation. There's currently a heat wave here, I'm writing this on an energy consuming device and in my lifetime I more than once accidentally touched a hot wire: Energy IS real.

The point with these kind of questions ["Is <xy> real?" What is <yz> really?"] is, that they cannot be answered without defining a valid framework for an answer first. Such a framework can be found in philosophy or maybe in mathematics. I doubt that it can be found in physics. Physics describes measurable effects, and as energy is measurable as well as has obvious effects, it is real. One can even chose between many forms of energy (see above) and therewith definitions. All of them are real.

So as always with these kind of questions, we have to end the (in my eyes fruitless) discussion at some point and this point has come for this thread, so it will be closed.